Not too long ago, Google said, we need everyone to have SSL! This essentially meant that all communication from your browser/device going to the destination, will be encrypted. However, the massive amount of traffic going through the pipes today, you really need hefty equipment to be able to listen in on a tiny fraction of unencrypted communication. Before this demand, we use to just encrypt the pages that actually carried sensitive data, like the checkout page, maybe the signup if critical info was entered. Email isn't considered "critical." So, we said, OK Big G, we'll do that. The downside, is it does slightly make the response time slower on the server. But what good is it else? Just SEO ranking. If you don't have a SSL on your site today, Google will suppress it off page one results (so the rumor goes).
We still come across websites today with NO SSL and they have not a clue why. Either they were told they "had one" and it was going through a CDN using the free SSL, such as Cloudflare or it expired. The SSL pricing was fairly prohibitive for most websites 10 years ago. Now the prices have gone down significantly and we even see free SSL services by Let's Encrypt. While this is great, don't get it confused with website security. It will not stop someone attempting to inject or takeover a website with brute force. While we harden all of our websites, the SSL is not a website "guard" of any such way. It's just an encrypted pipe that offers data sniff protection.
Making a SSL set up on a website today is a fairly trivial task, but it's a requirement if you want to rank well on the SERPS. Call or email Webix if you are looking to put a SSL on your website.